Notice
When I began blogging, I started here at wordpress.com. Then I moved content to a self-hosted site at edstevensdba.com. I am now entering retirement and will be no longer producing new content or responding to replies. However, some of my posts have proven valuable to many people over the years, so I have moved all content back to my original blog here on wordpress.com, where it can remain available with less work on my part.
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You may be asking, “Why yet another Oracle blog?” To be honest, I’m still asking myself that question. But, I’ve had several people who’ve seen my comments on OTN urge me to start a blog to collect all that “wisdom” (!?!?) into one place. So . . . why not?
I’ll try to post about once a week, mostly demonstration and explanation of things that seem to get a lot of questions but also an occasional opinion piece (aka “rant”) about IT and the people in it. My closest and oldest friend says I’ve been a curmudgeon all my life, so I guess you can expect a curmudgeon’s viewpoint.
So standby. As they used to say as a teaser to the evening news, “Film at eleven.”
Ed Stevens, DBA 
Hey, Glad to see you’re blogging. Couldn’t have happened to a better old curmudgeon. Actually, I think your a Wise Old Soul. And, it’s about time you share some of that wisdom with the universe.
Ed, I count you among the couple of people whose posts on OTN I enjoy reading. Informative and practical, flavored with a dry wit. Looking forward to the rants.
This is one Oracle blog I am glad to see. Thanks for sharing, Ed.
I read it then I bookmark it…. 🙂
Thanks for sharing Ed….
Thank you for posting the detailed information on the tns listner, very helpful.
Ed,
thanks very much for the article on ORA-12514 errors. This was extremely perplexing to us until we stumbled on it. thanks again.
Had the pleasure of working with you…and still can with your curmudgeonly blog!
Thanks. I just need to come up with some ideas for new material. 😉
I came by to thank you for your necro-post to
https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=1245473&start=15&tstart=0
I totally needed that. It was such a relief when it worked.
(I was having the same problem, so tried to import as SYS, but your post showed me that I needed to import as SYSTEM.)
Actually you didn’t “need” to use SYSTEM. I could have just as easily created a new user BEETLE, given it only CREATE SESSION and EXPORT/IMPORT_FULL_DATABASE, and used that account to do the exp/imp operations.
The docs specifically warn against using SYS to do routine exports and imports.
Ed,
I am looking for a Universe DBA and wanted to see if you knew of anybody that would be looking or someone I can talk to? The opening is a permanent opening in Tampa, Florida.
Thank you for the help!
Ryan
Contact Information:
Ryan Mac Donald
Senior Technical Recruiter
Saicon Consultants
9300 W 110th Street / Suite 650
Overland Park, KS 66210
913-451-1178 #14
rmacdonald@saiconinc.com
Send me a linked in invite to connect for the future:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmacdonaldtechnicaljobs
No. Sorry.
Ed,
Thank you so much for the great work, you saved my day. I have a much clearer understanding of the listener and tnsname.ora after visiting your blog…Outstanding!
Babacar
Hi Ed
Your post on configuring the Virtual Box network enviornment is excellent. The clarity of explanation has helped me to overcome an issue I was experiencing with OEL 6 update 3. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences with the rest of us.
Your posts are wonderful! Your ‘what ifs’ are great.
As Babacar said, I finally finally finally have a good understanding of client connectivity.
Again, thank you.
Your article is extremely useful to resolve the ORA-12514 error and also very nice explanation about listener configuration “Exploring the LOCAL_LISTENER parameter.
Thank you Brother.
Hello Ed Stevens,
I have enjoyed reading your articles on how to resolve listener issues.
At the moment, I am experiencing
ORA-12154: TNS: could not resolve the connect identifier specified and have tried all I could to no avail.
Below are some of the steps taken:
tnsping test ( connect successfully)
sqlplus system/oracle333@test
and ( SQL> conn smartbk/smartbk@test
Connected.
Show parameter service_name and
show parameter db_name
The results are all the same as the service name in the TNSNAMES.ORA file. (i.e. SMARTBK)
Listener listening on default port 1521 and status is READY
using the NETCA utility, I deleted and recreated Listener.ora and TNSNAMES.ORA files
The sqlnet.ora file contained the parameters below
NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH =(TNSNAMES)
NAMES.DEFAULT_DOMAIN = BSICGHANA.COM
Despite all the above, my application is not connecting and giving the error above.
Please can you help me. Thank you in advance.
Silas
First, remember that TNS-12154 means the request never – ever – leaves the client process. It cannot leave the client process because the very definition of TNS-12154 is that it doesn’t’ know where to send the request. Therefore, whatever is returned from looking at database instance parameters (show parameter …) are meaningless to this error. Likewise, efforts to reconfigure the listener are also pointless.
With that out of the way, you claim you get a succesfull tnsping and a successful connection with sqlplus, but your app returns the error. Therefore there are only two possibilities.
1) Your application is not operating in the same environement as your tnsping test. It is either executing on some other machine, or is inheriting a different set of environment variables, like ORACLE_HOME and PATH.
2) Your application is not using the same Net Service Name as you used in your tnsping test. How do you provide this information to your application?
Hello Ed Stevens,
I appreciate your assessment. It has helped me to review the mapped drives and shared folders and application is now opening. The issue actually has nothing to do with the Listener.ora nor tnsnames.ora files. Much thanks for your immense assistance. I appreciate it a lot.
So for everyone’s continued learning, what WAS the resolution?
The Objects for the application were in a folder which is also in another folder (this was to separate it from other similar/same named folders) before the inner folder was shared and the folder was mapped to a drive.
So what I did ( due to your expert advice) was to:
1. remove the sharing
2. move the inner folder out (I renamed the other folders to avoid name conflicts)
3. Re-shared and remapped and Voila!!!
Am very grateful for your assessment.
Glad it worked out. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Stevens, You posts are quite helpful and you have covered tns part of Oracle networking too much in details. Could you post on Oracle Architecture and RAC architecture
That’s a pretty broad request. Up front, I’d just recommend you read the Concepts Guide. Anything specific you want to know about? I have no hands-on experience with RAC, but a good specific question could give me an idea of what to explore in my lab.
Hello! Yours links to edstevensdba.com does not seem to work. ???
Yes, unfortunately, a recent plugin update rendered the entire site inaccessible. I can’t even log on to it myself. I am currently working on trying to restore from a backup but that may take several days, as the blog is not my “day job”. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Ok! Thanks. I’ll be waiting for… Yours posts are very useful. 😊😊😊
I’m happy to announce that I have successfully recovered my site at edstevensdba.com. I hope you find the content there to be useful.
Thanks very much!!!